Werewolves

by Graeme Davis

  Lycaean Zeus

  Mount Lykaion is in the remote mountain region of Arcadia in southern Greece. The region figures heavily in many ancient reports of lycanthropy, and documents in the archives of the Tyana Institute suggest that in Classical times it was the home of a tribe of hereditary werewolves, perhaps descended from the semi-mythical Lycaon.

  The cult of Lycaean Zeus involved human sacrifice, and may be very ancient in origin; in a paper on ancient lycanthropy preserved in the Institute’s archives, Benjamin Franklin wonders whether the cult’s original bloodthirsty deity was conflated with Olympian Zeus later in the Classical period. Greek and Roman writers regularly referred to ancient and foreign deities by the names of their own “true” gods.

  Among the papers of Margaret Murray, preserved at University College, London, are extensive notes on lycanthropy. They date to the time when Murray was researching her celebrated book The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, and suggest that she was planning a chapter on wolf-cults and werewolves that never appeared in the published work.

  Murray thought that the wolf-cult was either an offshoot of the witch-cult or an older, shamanic-animist religion that appeased the spirits of predatory animals with human and animal sacrifices; this suspicion has been borne out by modern archaeology, which has dated the earliest ritual activity on Mount Lykaion to the beginning of the third millennium BC. Murray’s notes contain references to some darker traditions involving ritual cannibalism as a rite of passage for young men, although she dismisses reports of lycanthropic transformation following the ritual meal as delusions brought on by some hallucinogenic drug.

  The cult seems to have survived the Turkish occupation of Greece, and grown through the 1920s. Nazi werewolf researchers investigated the area in the 1940s, as will be seen in a later chapter, and Greece’s Axis occupiers were never able to subdue Arcadia completely.

  An 18th-century illustration of the story of Lycaon.

  Some researchers argue that cursed werewolves appear more wolf-like when in their wolf man form than do viral werewolves, though no systematic study has yet been attempted. Artwork by Hauke Kock.

  Postwar emigration took the cult of Lycaean Zeus to North America, Australia, and many other countries, where it survives in secret. The cult seems very wary of exposure, and some scholars take this as an indication that it continues its cannibalistic ritual feasts. A handful of convicted cannibal killers have made statements referring to the ancient cult, but in all cases they were lone killers who became obsessive lycanthropes after reading about the cult in Pliny or other sources. None has been firmly linked to the cult itself.

  The cult of Lycaean Zeus is classified as an unknown threat by the Tyana Institute. At the time of writing, no agent has returned from a mission to locate and infiltrate the cult, and all are presumed dead.

  Close-up of a carved relief of Wepwawet from the Karnak Temple at Luxor, Egypt.

  Wepwawet

  The Egyptian god Wepwawet, sometimes called “the opener of the way,” is occasionally confused with jackal-headed Anubis, but hieroglyphic inscriptions speak of wolf-headed Wepwawet as a war-god who “opens the way to victory.”

  The Egyptian cult of Wepwawet became extinct in ancient times. Some scholars have taken the name “opener of the way” to imply that Wepwawet was a patron of military scouts, and researchers working for the Talbot Group in the 1940s speculated on the existence of werewolf scouts in the armies of Ramses II, but the nature of the cult remains unclear.

  The worship of Wepwawet was revived in Britain and France in the 1890s. Initially popular only among intellectuals, it spread to the military of both nations before the start of World War I and even gained some adherents in Germany. Since then it has spread across the world, especially among assassins and special forces troops.

  Unlike the cult of Lycaean Zeus, the modern cult of Wepwawet does not include cannibalism among its rituals. Burnt offerings of meat are made to the god, usually in an underground temple. The Talbot Group and the Tyana Institute both believe that cult members can shapeshift into wolf form, and some reports suggest that they have other supernatural abilities including speed, silence, and invisibility.

  The cult does not seem to have any defined agenda beyond the empowerment and advancement of its members. It has not been linked to any political assassinations or manipulation of government or army policies, or to any violent incidents of lycanthropy. The Tyana Institute classifies it as “generally benign.”

  Fenrir

  In Norse myth, Fenrir is a monstrous wolf who is fated to kill Odin at the world-ending battle of Ragnarok. There is no indication that the Vikings worshiped Fenrir, and the Norse neo-pagan Asatru movement does not recognize Fenrir among its deities. The 19th-century Danish psychologist and mythologist Morten Lindegaard believed that Fenrir, Jormungand, Loki, and others were folk-memories of older, more savage gods that were supplanted by the Aesir and Vanir of Norse myth, but remained in the mythology as devil-like figures.

  The present-day cult of Fenrir apparently dates back no further than 1933, when events in Germany inspired the growth of Nordic nationalism and fascist politics across Scandinavia. Fenrir was adopted as a patron by some of the more violent pro-Nazi groups in both Norway and Denmark, and his cult was particularly strong in the SS Wiking Division, which was recruited mainly from pro-Nazi Scandinavians.

  The cult of Fenrir spread within the SS and documents recovered by US intelligence officers suggest that at least some of the SS Werwolf troops were members. The cult went underground at the end of World War II but has been growing in recent years, especially among white-supremacist groups that make extensive use of Norse and Nazi symbolism.

  The cult’s rituals almost always involved tests of strength and ferocity. They included armed and unarmed combats, ritual blood-letting, and the hunting of both human and animal prey. In return for blood-sacrifice, it was believed that Fenrir would grant the cultists strength and ruthlessness in order to defeat their enemies. Weakness was not tolerated, and cultists who failed any test of strength or endurance were hunted down and killed by their former comrades.

  Not all Fenrir cultists were werewolves, but in 1946 former SS werewolves staged a bloody coup which left them in control. Today, the cult is a two-level organization consisting of werewolf “officers” and human “prospects” who undergo a series of tests and initiations before being exposed to lycanthropy.

  The cult of Fenrir appears on a number of watch lists, but is generally regarded as too small and scattered to pose a serious threat beyond the local level. Its effectiveness is undermined by regular and bloody territorial disputes and power struggles. However, all concerned agencies agree if a leader should arise who is strong enough to unite its widespread chapters into a single cohesive force, it could become much more dangerous.

  It should be noted that there is no connection between the present-day cult of Fenrir and the so-called “Children of Fenris,” a short-lived cult that was active in Paris between 1919 and 1921, when it was destroyed by the Sûreté. The latter was a militant nihilist-anarchist group inspired by the carnage of World War I to bring about the Apocalypse. Despite the savagery of many of their actions, there is no evidence that any of the Children of Fenris were werewolves.

  The Nazi Werwulf commandos are the best-known lycanthropic military force today, but they were by no means the first. Rulers and military leaders have always valued werewolves for their strength and aggression, as well as for the superstitious awe they inspire in an enemy. The use of werewolves as shock troops and elite guards goes back to the earliest times.

  Lupi Dacii

  The Twelve Caesars by Gaius Suetonius is still consulted by classicists today. It contains a wealth of detail about the lives of the first Roman emperors, from Julius Caesar to Domitian. Few know about the thirteenth book, covering the life of Trajan, which was expurgated by the Vatican in the 13th century. Only one copy of the complete work is known to exist today, hidden in a secret Vatican archi
ve in the Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome.

  As secretary and chief archivist to Trajan’s successor Hadrian, Suetonius had access to first-hand accounts of the Dacian Wars, including reports of what he called the lupi dacii (“Dacian wolves”) who wrought havoc with terrifying night attacks on Roman camps. Reading between the lines of Suetonius’ account, the Dacians apparently had an elite force of werewolves – perhaps a warrior lodge, although details of Dacian society and customs are scanty – that served their kings as commandos and shock troops.

  Nothing is known of the lupi dacii apart from the fact of their existence. All other details have been lost to the Vatican’s determination to stamp out belief in werewolves throughout Christendom.

  Wulfings, Berserkers and Ulfhednar

  The Vikings were among the earliest people to incorporate werewolves into their military forces. King Harald Fairhair of Norway (c. 850–932) maintained a corps of berserkers called ulfhednar (“wolf-hide men”) as shock troops in his campaigns to unify Norway, and many chroniclers of the time attest to their effectiveness on the battlefield.

  A werewolf berserker, shown on a Swedish bronze plaque from the pre-Viking Vendel period (AD 550–790).

  The story William of Palermo, sometimes called “William the Werewolf” is a 14th-century French romance that features a “good” cursed werewolf. (Ivy Close Images / Alamy)

  Early in his reign, Harald’s armies reached the region of Östergötland (“East Goth-Land”) in present-day Sweden. This was a small kingdom whose ruling clan, the Wulfings (“Wolf People”), is mentioned in Beowulf as well as in various Scandinavian royal sagas. Swedish academic Bram Eldarsson has suggested that Östergötland was the home to an ancient werewolf bloodline from which Harald recruited his ulfhednar for his later campaigns.

  Later Scandinavian kings followed Harald’s lead, recruiting berserkers as elite troops or personal bodyguards. Accounts of the battle of Maldon in AD 991 mention waelwulfas (“slaughter-wolves”) among the attacking Danish Army.

  The nature of the ulfhednar and other wolf-berserkers is debated. Many scholars believe that the earliest berserkers were true werewolves descended from the Wulfing bloodline. As time went on, though, they were joined by wolf cultists and others who were attracted by their fierce reputation and their life of violent adventure. By the 11th century, the meaning of the word berserker had broadened to include wandering bands of brigands and a class of professional duelists comparable to the gunslingers of the Old West.

  As Christianity spread throughout Scandinavia in the 11th and 12th centuries, various rulers issued decrees outlawing berserkers, and by the end of the Northern Crusades around 1290 werewolves were seen as agents of evil, just as they were in southern and Western Europe.

  Ottoman Kurt Suçlular

  In 1389 the Ottoman Army began to conscript light troops called azab to support the janissaries and other regular units. Officially named Başıbozuk (“irregulars”) and known informally as Delibaş (“crazy heads”), these troops were recruited from the empire’s criminal classes. They were used primarily as cannon fodder, but the most violent were organized into bands of varying size and used as shock troops.

  Werewolves had been a thorn in the side of the Ottomans ever since Vlad Tepes of Wallachia began using them as raiders and skirmishers in his campaigns of 1459–62 against Sultan Mehmed II. Transylvania’s Bathory dynasty, which had links to Vlad’s family through the Hungarian Order of the Dragon, quickly followed suit, and for a while it seemed that all of eastern Europe might throw off Ottoman rule. Romanian historian Dr Radu Lupescu believes that Constantinople’s werewolf infestation of 1542 was an attempt by Radu VII Paisie of Wallachia to revive Vlad’s tactics, but this claim remains controversial.

  After the werewolf hunt of 1542, Suleiman the Magnificent offered captured werewolves the choice of execution or service in the Başbozuk as kurt suçlular (“wolf criminals”). Chroniclers from Hungary to Iraq write of the terror these lycanthropic troops spread on the battlefield, and on more than one occasion their mere presence was enough to shatter the morale of an opposing army.

  The first kurt suçlular were recruited from the survivors of the 1542 purge and from the hills of Anatolia. This first draft was quickly supplemented from Transylvania, Wallachia, and Moldavia, which Suleiman had conquered by 1541. His campaigns against the Persian Safavid Empire in Georgia enabled him to strengthen the kurt suçlular with Georgian vakhtang werewolves, and his armies seemed unstoppable. However, Safavid leader Shah Tahmasp I, who still controlled eastern Georgia, was working to strengthen the Persian military in the face of Ottoman expansion. Tahmasp recruited vakhtang of his own. The battle of Erzurum in 1555 was a rare occasion when werewolves faced werewolves on the battlefield; the same year, the Peace of Amasya defined the borders of the Ottoman and Safavid empires for the next 20 years.

  The kurt suçlular continued as a part of the Ottoman military through the empire’s zenith and decline. The Wallachian Revolution of 1848 saw werewolves fighting on both sides, and among the Crimean War trophies stored beneath St Petersburg’s Artillery Museum is a large wolf-skin said to have been taken from a Turkish werewolf at the battle of Balaclava. Reported sightings of wolf-headed soldiers at the battle of Gallipoli in World War I are dismissed in an official British report preserved in the Imperial War Museum.

  Today, Turkey officially denies using werewolves in any military or paramilitary force. However, conflicting reports from Kurdistan suggest that the kurt suçlular or their successors are still active in counterinsurgency and counterterror operations, and may be responsible for several alleged atrocities.

  The Tyana Rangers

  The Patriot militia known as the Tyana Rangers came out of a 1775 meeting between Benjamin Franklin and Ethan Allen. After capturing Fort Ticonderoga, Crown Point, and Fort George in New York, Allen’s Green Mountain Boys had been driven from St John’s in Quebec (now Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu) by a pack of Loyalist werewolves that had been terrorizing the area to discourage the French-speaking Québècois from joining the American colonies in their rebellion against British rule. Frustrated by this defeat, Allen traveled to Philadelphia to consult with the Tyana Institute.

  Although the Norse word berserker means “bear-skinned,” King Harold Fairhair employed a corps of ulfhednar (“wolf-skinned”) berserkers as shock troops and bodyguards in his conquest of Norway and his campaigns in Sweden. Some historians believe these werewolf warriors were the descendants of the Wulfing clan mentioned in Beowulf and other sources, which ruled East Gotland in the 5th century.

  Later Viking rulers also used werewolf troops. An Anglo-Saxon poem describing the Battle of Maldon in 991 tells of waelfulfas (“slaughter-wolves”) among the Viking force.

  Early Christian saints condemned lycanthropy, and the practice died out after the Northern Crusades of the 12th and 13th centuries imposed Christianity on Scandinavia. Livonia (modern Latvia and Lithuania) was one of the last areas to be subdued, and lycanthropy was common among Livonia’s noble families until at least the 16th century.

  The combination of Allen’s expertise in irregular warfare and Franklin’s knowledge of the supernatural produced the improvements in equipment and tactics that the Green Mountain Boys needed, and it had another result as well. Inspired by his meeting with Allen, Franklin set about recruiting a specialist militia for dealing with British Freemasons, werewolves, and other supernatural foes.

  As well as seasoned scouts, monster-hunters, and magical adepts, Franklin recruited a small group of werewolves as scouts and skirmishers. Using their wolf forms to evade British scouts and sentries, the werewolves – known as Randall’s Volunteers for their leader, Lieutenant William Randall – brought back valuable intelligence on British movements and troop strength, destroyed British scouting parties and raided supply convoys.

  The Tyana Rangers’ most celebrated action, however, took place on December 25 and 26, 1776. A letter from Washington to Lt Randall, preserved in the archives of
the 34th Specialist Regiment, reads as follows:

  I cannot let this occasion pass, without conveying to you and your command my deepest congratulations and thanks, for your contribution to the recent action at Trenton. Your timely warning of the Hessians’ necromantic preparations, and the valor displayed by your Volunteers, and the whole of the Tyana Rangers, in the action that followed, places the Continental Army, and the whole cause of Freedom, profoundly in your debt.

  I regret extremely that these few words must be your only acknowledgement for now, and I hope sincerely that a more enlightened time will come, when the triumph of reason over superstitious fear will allow the world to know the entire truth. For nothing is more certain in my mind, but that had the Hessians been permitted to complete their design, innumerable Patriotic lives must surely have been lost to their monstrous revenant cavalry.

  The Tyana Rangers were disbanded at the end of the war, but the names of Randall and other officers appear in accounts of the Second Cherokee War and the War of 1812. They also took part in various anti-piracy actions around the Caribbean between 1791 and 1825, and in the Haitian Revolution of 1791–1804.

  Wolf Partisans

  As Nazi power extended across central and southern Europe, German troops found themselves under attack from partisans of all types, including werewolves. Transylvania was ruled by German allies and almost no activity was reported there, but werewolf attacks on Axis troops in Greece, Macedonia, and Bulgaria prompted the German Ahnenerbe to investigate.

  Greece was occupied by the Axis powers from April 1941 to October 1944. Although Arcadia fell within the Italian zone of occupation, the German Ahnenerbe sent three expeditions to Mount Lykaion. At the end of the war their reports were recovered by the British Operation Surgeon and passed to the Talbot Group.